Chapter 4

Aria Blake

Something ripped me out of sleep. Not gently hard, sudden, like being yanked out of water before you could breathe. My heart slammed so fast I thought it would burst. For a second, I didn’t know where I was. Everything around me was dark and still, but my body was shaking like it hadn’t gotten the message that the nightmare was over.

My pulse beat everywhere at oncethroat, wrists, behind my eyes like my blood couldn’t decide where to hide.

The dream was the same as always. The slam of a metal door. Boots slapping concrete. The sour smell of sweat and bleach mixed with fear that had lived too long in the air. A man’s laugh, low and close enough that I could feel it vibrate against my spine. Then the blindfold rough fabric, hands that didn’t care if they bruised. After that there was only breathing, steady and wrong, too near to ever forget.

I shoved myself upright, lungs burning, the room spinning. Sweat slicked my skin and turned cold as it cooled, crawling down my back. The sheet was tangled tight around my legs like it wanted to hold me down, and for a second I fought it, kicking free until the sound of my own breathing scared me back into stillness.

This wasn’t the warehouse. It wasn’t the cell. I told myself that again and again, but my body didn’t believe me.

This wasn’t the warehouse. It wasn’t the cell. But my body didn’t care. My body only knew how to remember.

I gripped the edge of the dresser until the tremors in my hands started to slow. The mirror caught my reflection, and I almost looked away. My hair was damp and tangled, my eyes wide and wild, my lips parted like I’d been running. My chest rose and fell too fast, like I couldn’t convince it to stop.

“You’re safe,” I whispered to the mirror. The words didn’t sound right. They fell flat, like they were trying too hard to be true.

I realized I was still in this expensive looking room that still felt strange. I wondered what they wanted from me and nobody told me anything tangible. “Was this another cage or captor?” I asked myself with no answer still staring at the walls around me

My eyes followed the line of the wall upward until I found it , a small red blink near the ceiling. There was a camera watching me. The light pulsed once and it was red

My stomach turned over.

I stepped back until my knees hit the edge of the bed, heart hammering again, not the fast flutter of panic but something colder, deeper, like my body knew the script. I’d woken in rooms like this before cages dressed up in soft sheets and warm light, places that looked safe until you noticed the lock. I knew what came after.

They always started the same way. You’re safe now. Just rest and eat. And then came the torture that will last eternity

I pressed the heel of my hand against my chest, trying to count the beats and prove I was still here. The rhythm wouldn’t slow.

My thoughts spun through the years like a deck of old photographs, edges frayed, faces fading. The boss with the gold rings who liked to watch people flinch. The guards who used names like poker chips, trading them when they were bored. Days that blurred until you forgot which ones you’d survived.

Sometimes they’d make us sing to prove we still could. Sometimes silence was the punishment. I learned to keep both sharp enough to cut.

The camera blinked every second , I was counting. I swallowed, my throat raw. “Why am I here?” My voice barely carried past my own breath.

No answer. The room just absorbed the sound and gave nothing back.

I walked to the door and wrapped my hand around the handle. It didn’t move. My fingers slipped, damp with sweat, and I laughed under my breath thin, unsteady, a sound too close to crying. “Another cage,” I whispered.

I turned toward the window. The curtains hung heavy and shut tight, and my reflection hovered there a ghost wearing someone else’s body. I pressed my forehead to the cold glass and tried to remember the last time I’d seen daylight that wasn’t stolen through bars. Nothing came. Just pieces fire, gunshots, a man’s voice cutting through smoke, the weightless moment when everything went white.

That voice. Calm, controlled, dangerous in a way that didn’t need to shout. The kind of voice that could decide whether you lived or didn’t, and make both sound like mercy.

I said his name before I realized I knew it. “Damien.”

I had heard one of his men call him that. My breath caught. “Are you watching me?”

Still no answer, just the slow, steady rhythm of that red pulse one heartbeat that wasn’t mine.

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold floor, the bandage on my shoulder pulling with each shallow breath. I wanted to tear it off, to see the wound, to prove there was still a body under all this fear, but my hands wouldn’t obey.

The silence wrapped itself around me, thick as a blanket I couldn’t shake off. My body remembered faster than my mind the metallic scent of gun oil,the blood, my friends dead, hunger so deep it made you see things that weren’t there. I pressed my nails into my palms until the sting replaced the memory.

“I’m not yours just let me go” I whispered again, louder this time, eyes on the ceiling. The words trembled out of me, soft and shaking, like they’d forgotten how to stand on their own. For a heartbeat I almost believed them. But the room stayed silent, and that small red light kept blinking, patient as always slow, steady, a quiet heartbeat that didn’t belong to me.

Somewhere far away, unseen, a second light blinked in perfect rhythm, as if the world itself had decided to argue.

~~~

Damien Wolfe

He watched her from behind the glass, drink untouched, jaw tight. He told himself she wasn’t his problem. But the longer he looked, the more he knew he was lying.